Thursday, February 9, 2012

Motorola Motoluxe launch in UK

Motorola has confirmed plans to launch the Motoluxe, a budget-friendly Android smartphone, in the UK towards the end of this month.

Designed to offer a mid-range alternative to the company's high-end Android offerings, the Motoluxe will retail for around £250 SIM-free and is likely to be made available free on contracts from the major mobile networks.

Based around an 800MHz processor with 300MB of memory, the Motoluxe isn't exactly a speed demon. It also uses Google's Android 2.3 'Gingerbread' operating system, rather than the latest - and much-improved - Android 4.0 'Ice Cream Sandwich' release.

The device does has its good points, however: the 4inh touchscreen boasts a respectable 480x854 resolution while the 122g weight and 9.8mm thickness make it pocket-friendly in both senses of the phrase. A smart status light in the bottom-left corner alerts to missed calls or new emails, too - a feature all too lacking from some companies' high-end handsets.

An eight-megapixel camera on the rear of the device includes a flash and video-capture capabilities. Motorola has also included its MotoSwitch user interface, which comes bundled with additional software include Social Graph for quick access to your most frequently used social networking contacts, MusicNow and Smart Gallery.

Motorola claims talk time of 6.5 hours on 2G or 4.5 hours on 3G from the 1400mAh battery, along with a standby time of between 400 and 450 hours. This will decrease if the in-built Bluetooth 3.0 or 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi connections are active.